Poverty: Half The World Lives On Less Than $2.50 A Day

Gilbert Mercier

Almost half of the world-over 3 Billion people- has to survive with less than $2.50 per day. The current events unfolding in Thailand, India and Kyrgyzstan have a lot more to do with the problems of poverty and social injustice than conventional ideological issues.

In Thailand, the Red Shirts are the poor from the rural areas fighting for a small share of the pie controlled by the urban elites and the military. In India, the economic boom has left most Indians behind, and the Maoists movement is getting a popular boost because of it. If, as a global community, we do not seriously reconsider our model of development and urgently address the issues of poverty and social injustice, it is likely that the social unrest unfolding in Thailand, Kyrgyzstan and India will become more widespread. If anything can be learn from world history, it is that once a society has reached the breaking point where a very small percentage of the population control the wealth and most of the resources, the poor will eventually organize and revolt against the existing order. This was the case in France in 1789 when the revolution toppled the monarchy, and again in Russia in 1917 when the communist revolution took down the Czar.

To say that the facts and statistics on worldwide poverty are troubling is an understatement, as matter of fact they are overwhelming, and only getting worse on a daily basis. For instance, at least 80 percent of humanity lives on less than $10 a day, and more than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening. Not only the gap between rich industrialized nations and poor developing countries is growing, but income differentials are increasing within the boundaries of rich nations and poor nations alike. Globalization is having a negative impact on the poor in both the industrialized world and the developing one.

For example, the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income while the richest 20 percent accounts for 3/4 of world income. According to UNICEF, 24,000 children die each day due to poverty. Among the 2.2 Billion children worldwide an estimated 1 Billion live in poverty. There is currently 121 Million children with no access to education worldwide; and for the 1.9 Billion children from the developing world there are 640 Million without adequate shelter, 400 Million with no access to safe water, 270 Million without health care, and 121 Million children worldwide with no access to education.

Meanwhile, the total wealth of the top 8.3 Million people around the world is globally rising dramatically, effectively giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets. In other words, in 2004 about 0.13 percent of the world’s population controlled 25 percent of the world’s wealth. If we consider the global spending priorities of 1998, the trends were already extremely alarming.

In 1998, $8 Billion were spent to buy cosmetic products in the United States, $11 Billion to buy ice cream in Europe, $12 Billion to buy perfumes in Europe and the United States, $17 Billion for pet foods in Europe and the US combined, $ 50 Billion to buy cigarettes in Europe, $105 Billion to buy alcoholic drinks in Europe, $400 Billion to buy narcotic drugs worldwide, and $780 Billion were spent in military expenditure globally. In comparison, according to Anup Shah from Global Issues.org, the cost to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries would be as followed: $ 6 Billion to provide basic education for all, $ 9 Billion to bring everyone water and sanitation, $ 12 Billion to provide reproductive health care for all women, and $13 Billion for basic healthcare and nutrition.

Our current form of globalization has not leveled the social playing field whatsoever, but has instead increased the unsustainable gap between the rich and the poor. According to the new economic data for March, American consumers are spending again, they are back in the shopping malls and buying durable goods, which could indicate that the worse of the recession is over. While this is good for Wall Street, which has regained all of its losses from the crash of 2008, it is not necessary good news for our society as a whole. The globalfinancial collapse was a unique opportunity in America and elsewhere to adjust our mode of economic development and make it more sustainable. Unfortunately, because of a general lack of political vision and will from our governments, the process of re-thinking capitalism to finally address the issues of poverty and social justice in the context of globalization never really took place.

3. A highly sophisticated surveillance grid known as "Trapwire" is being installed in major cities and at "high value targets" all over the United States. Unfortunately, most Americans do not even realize that it exists.

4. Police departments all over America are beginning to deploy unmanned surveillance drones in the skies over their cities. But don't think that a drone is not watching you just because you don't live in a major city. The truth is that the federal government has been using unmanned surveillance drones to spy on farmers in Iowa and Nebraska. There could be a drone over your house right now and you might not ever know it.

5. Individual politicians know more about you than they ever have before. The amount of information that the Obama campaign has compiled on potential voters is absolutely frightening...

If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you. His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection.

6. The UK is often five or ten years ahead of much of the rest of the world in implementing "Big Brother" police state measures. Over there it is now against the law to insult someone with your speech. If you say something that is "likely" to insult a Muslim or a homosexual you could end up being dragged in front of a judge. It is only a matter of time before we see these kinds of laws all over the planet.

7. Could you imagine the government telling you what the temperature inside your own home can be? A new law in France would do exactly that...

Heating a French home could soon require an income tax consultation or even a visit to the doctor under legislation to force conservation in the nation's $46 billion household energy market.A bill adopted by the lower house this month would set prices that homes pay based on wages, age and climate. Utilities Electricite de France and GDF Suez will use the data to reward consumers who cut power and natural gas usage and penalize those whom regulators decide are wasteful.

8. Control freak bureaucrats love to tell others how to run their lives. For example, one man down in Orlando, Florida was recently ordered to rip out the vegetable garden that he was growing in his front yard. Will we eventually get to the point where even the smallest details of our lives are micromanaged by the government?

9. Most Americans don't realize this, but the DNA of almost every newborn baby in America is collected and stored by the government. What plans do they have for all of this DNA?

10. All over America, schools are beginning to require students to carry IDs withRFID microchips in them wherever they go. Fortunately, some students arefighting back...

The San Antonio sophomore who opposed microchipping student IDs that would track their every movement has inspired a groundswell of 300 students in her huge district who now refuse to wear the identification chips over religious, personal privacy, safety and civil liberties concerns. In addition, some 700 other people have signed petitions opposing the microchipping program.

11. There is more crossover between our education system and our law enforcement system than ever before. An increasing number of schools in the United States have police officers roaming their hallways, and today there aremore than 70,000 children behind bars in America.

12. When you rely on FEMA to take care of you, it can literally feel like you are in prison. The following is a description of what life is like in one FEMA camp that was set up in New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy...

“Sitting there last night you could see your breath,” displaced resident Brian Sotelo told the Asbury Park Press. “At (Pine Belt) the Red Cross made an announcement that they were sending us to permanent structures up here that had just been redone, that had washing machines and hot showers and steady electric, and they sent us to tent city. We got (expletived).”Sotelo said Blackhawk helicopters patrol the skies “all day and night” and a black car with tinted windows surveys the camp while the government moves heavy equipment past the tents at night. According to the story, reporters aren’t even allowed in the fenced complex, where lines of displaced residents form outside portable toilets. Security guards are posted at every door, and residents can’t even use the toilet or shower without first presenting I.D.“They treat us like we’re prisoners,” Ashley Sabol told Reuters. “It’s bad to say, but we honestly feel like we’re in a concentration camp.”

13. Your cell phone collects information about you wherever you go, and law enforcement authorities in the United States requested that cell phone data be turned over to them more than a million times in 2011 alone.

14. The federal government has created an iPhone app that is designed to encourage all of us to take photos of "suspicious activity" and report our neighbors to the authorities.

15. The U.S. government is increasingly using spyware to monitor the behavior of their employees while they are at work.

16. According to three NSA whistleblowers, the agency "has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email."

17. Private corporations are gathering every shred of information about you that they possible can. One of the largest companies involved in "mining our data" is known as Acxiom. It turns out that Acxiom has compiled information on more than 190 million people in the United States alone…

The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data ‘transactions’ a year.

18. We are being trained to give up our privacy and our dignity in the name of "security". For example, what the TSA did recently to one woman who was dying of leukemia was absoutely shameful...

A dying woman says a a security pat-down at Sea-Tac Airport left her embarrassed in front of crowds of people.Michelle Dunaj says screeners checked under bandages from recent surgeries and refused to give her a private search when she requested one.

19. According to one recent survey, nearly one-third of all Americans would be willing to submit to a "TSA body cavity search" in order to fly.

20. Law enforcement authorities all over the United States will soon be driving around in unmarked vehicles looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same backscatter technology currently being used by the TSA at U.S. airports…

American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering’s Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call “the amazing radioactive genital viewer,” now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America’s streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don’t worry, it’s not a violation of privacy. As AS&E’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be.”

21. A company known as BRS Labs has developed "pre-crime surveillance cameras" that supposedly can identify criminal activity before it happens. These cameras are being installed at major transportation hubs all over San Francisco.

22. According to Gizmodo, the Department of Homeland Security will soon be using laser-based scanners that can scan your body, your clothes and your luggage from 164 feet away...

Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.And without you knowing it.The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded “in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress.” According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States.

23. A complex network of automated license plate readers carefully track the movements of millions of vehicles as they move in and out of Washington D.C. and the surrounding suburbs. Most people do not even know that they are there.

24. The FBI is spending a billion dollars to develop a biometric identification system that will reportedly be far more sophisticated than anything that law enforcement in the United States has ever had before….

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun rolling out its new $1 billion biometric Next Generation Identification (NGI) system. In essence, NGI is a nationwide database of mugshots, iris scans, DNA records, voice samples, and other biometrics, that will help the FBI identify and catch criminals — but it is how this biometric data is captured, through a nationwide network of cameras and photo databases, that is raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates.Until now, the FBI relied on IAFIS, a national fingerprint database that has long been due an overhaul. Over the last few months, the FBI has been pilot testing a facial recognition system — and soon, detectives will also be able to search the system for other biometrics such as DNA records and iris scans.

25. If the government decides that you are a "bad guy", they can put you on a "no fly list" that will ban you from flying indefinitely. This can be done to you at any time, without any notice, and you won't be told that it has happened. In fact, as one prepper discovered recently, you might only find out that you are on the list when you try to board a flight.

26. Those that revere individual liberty are now being labeled as "potential terrorists" in official U.S. government documents.

27. A National Guard whistleblower recently revealed that members of his unit were told that "doomsday preppers" will be treated as "terrorists" when civil unrest breaks out.

28. One family in Idaho recently had their home raided by a SWAT team because a computer identified them as "constitutionalists" after someone had phoned in and complained about a domestic disturbance at their address.

29. Today, the mainstream media in the United States is totally dominated by just six giant corporations. Those corporations own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and large numbers of popular websites. The way that almost every American looks at the world is being constantly influenced by these media corporations every single day.

Back in 1983 it was bad enough that about 50 corporations dominated U.S. media. But since that time, power over the media has rapidly become concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people....

In 1983, fifty corporations dominated most of every mass medium and the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal. … [I]n 1987, the fifty companies had shrunk to twenty-nine. … [I]n 1990, the twenty-nine had shrunk to twenty three. … [I]n 1997, the biggest firms numbered ten and involved the $19 billion Disney-ABC deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever. … [In 2000] AOL Time Warner’s $350 billion merged corporation [was] more than 1,000 times larger [than the biggest deal of 1983].

Today, six colossal media giants tower over all the rest. Much of the information in the chart below comes frommediaowners.com. The chart below reveals only a small fraction of the media outlets that these six behemoths actually own....

These gigantic media corporations do not exist to objectively tell the truth to the American people. Rather, the primary purpose of their existence is to make money.

These gigantic media corporations are not going to do anything to threaten their relationships with their biggest advertisers (such as the largest pharmaceutical companies that literally spend billions on advertising), and one way or another these gigantic media corporations are always going to express the ideological viewpoints of their owners.

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Rep. Ron Paul, whose maverick presidential bids shook the GOP, said in the wake of this week's elections that the country has already veered over the fiscal cliff and he sees no chance of righting ship in a country where too many people are dependent on government.

Mr. Paul, who is retiring after 12 terms in the House, said voters on Tuesday rejected Mitt Romney because he had opposed the government bailout of General Motors and Chrysler.

"The people in the Midwest voted against him: 'Oh, we have to be taken care of!' So that vote was sort of like what we are laughing at in Greece," Mr. Paul said.

"People do not want anything cut," he said. "They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing money. They do not believe we have gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff. They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with a magic solution."

He added, "You cannot have a budgetary solution if you do not change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to please the world and run this welfare state, all we will argue about is who will get the loot."http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/nov/8/ron-paul-election-shows-us-far-gone/#ixzz2BeYhbnZT

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

"I don't think there's enough difference between the two candidates, and I assume the victor today will be the status quo," Paul said. "We're going to continue with basically the same policies that we've had for a long time, so I don't see the election, as the way its turning out, to be very crucial at all."

So I had to snag a picture of what this preteen girl wrote down for her "declaration"
This thought - coming from the minds of today's children (elementry and middle school age) is not due to "free thinking" but rather it is what is being taught and sought to become the "proper" thinking of today and tomorrows youth in line with the UN treaty on Children's Rights.
If you are not aware of the fight for your child's mind, I humbling suggest you take a moment to evaluate the depth of "knowledge" being instilled in your child through the "state" via today's classrooms.
Here is how it is politely framed by Unicef...Convention on the Rights of the Child
and here is how it is lived out...the Child20 things you need to know about the UN Convention on Rights of the Child

Hannes is a leader...He has already passed on his most cherished "bad habit" to Nathanael

My attempt at Fall Pics of the boys...
closest I got to three sets of eyes facing forward

November 3, 2012

November 3, 2012

Simply Stunning

Fun with cousins

Cousins visited us the last week of September and we had a 80+ degree day, so the beach was a must

My sister and brother-in-law
Refreshed by Virginia climate and salt water